The present invention relates to equestrian harness or saddlery equipment and particularly concerns body strap components thereof such as girths, surcingles and rollers.
Traditionally, the bulk of such equipment, including the body strap components specified, have been made of leather. Although leather can generally be excellently suited for this purpose, it is a relatively costly material. It must be carefully selected and prepared to provide the requisite quality and needs careful and proper maintenance in use. Consequently, there has been some interest in the use of alternative substitute materials as a replacement for the traditional leather. However with at least some items of equipment, such as the aforementioned body strap components, there are various practical problems which have generally given certain disadvantages in performance when adopting alternative substitute materials.
For example, various types of girths which have been produced include cotton or wool webbing girths, all elastic girths composed of elastomeric material, lampwick girths and girths composed of nylon cords. Each of these different types, however, have usually been found to have some practical characteristics which make them less satisfactory than is to be desired, arising from one or more of the following reasons:
(a) a tendency to rot giving a limited life; PA1 (b) a tendency for an excessive sweat absorption and insufficient "breathing" of the material leading possibly to hardening or other deterioration in physical characteristics of the material; PA1 (c) a low resistance to washing which has a deleterious effect on the article or material thereof; PA1 (d) insufficient or excessive resilience or elasticity; PA1 (e) a tendency to chafe or to exert excessive pressure unevenly, in undesirable localized areas, against the body of the horse.
For these and other various reasons, there is scope for providing improved forms of such body strap components of saddlery equipment composed, at least principally, of a material other than leather.